Disclaimer: this post is ’bout to get sentimental. Read at your own risk.

I was beside myself with excitement when I learned that I would be a joining Brokaw for the summer. I’ve known for a while that working at an ad agency is what I want to do, but I was never (still not) exactly sure what I want to do in one. Before I started, I had a few informational sessions with agencies around Ohio and I thought I wanted to go into Account Services. When I got the digital and social media internship, I was excited to see if maybe that was where I want to be. Low and behold, I grew a love for media. I love the planning aspect and the fact that it incorporates some creativity in order to find just the right placements for the client.

Not only was the work fun, but the people….the people are incredible. From the beginning, everyone has been so welcoming and so kind to Ellie and I. I can’t thank you all enough for taking me under you wing and making me feel like I was a true part of the team. I have had some great teachers and amazing mentors here (special shout out to the media team and Renee) who have impacted my life in the best of ways. I have learned so much from this experience and I am forever grateful!

Hm. The word/picture ratio is a bit off…here’s a picture.

There, that’s better. Now back to me being mushy.

This internship has truly spoiled me. Apparently it’s not normal for the CEOs to open a tab at Barley House multiple times for everyone in office? Dang. And I guess it’s also unheard of for the CEOs to also throw a company wide pub crawl. Hm. I am surely counting my lucky stars for being able to work at a place that condones so much…fun.

With that said, my broternship has definitely been one to remember. I will truly miss this place and everyone in it!

I’m starting this post with an obvious statement: social media has become the center of our universe (don’t deny it) and as we’re actively in that space, advertisers must be there as well.

I’ve decided to highlight some awesome social media campaigns and touch on how much it benefited the brands:

National Geographic India’s “My Nat Geo Covershot” which was launched on Facebook and allowed fans the opportunity for their photos to appear on the cover of National Geographic. Followers had to upload their photos and caption it, entering them in the contest. They also had the chance to win travel packages. This garnered over 18K photos like this:

This earned National Geographic 3.8 million additional likes even though it wasn’t a requirement for the contest.

Sam Adams’ HeliYUM beer that they promoted through YouTube…on April Fool’s Day (I smell trouble). Sam Adams posted this video to introduce its “radical, extreme new beer” with a new secret ingredient…helium. This elicited over a half million views by the end of the month. I wonder how many of these viewers went to the store to find this magical helium beer? *face palm*

Oreo launched an #OreoSnackHacks where Viners can create and post their 6-second “snack hacks” using Oreos. This was so successful that Oreo turned this into a web series. Here’s an Oreo Snack Hack:

Johnson’s Baby Canada held a contest in which contestants would enter their baby’s photo on Johnson Baby Canada’s Facebook page in order to win a chance for their baby’s photo to be placed on their website. This contest tripled their Facebook following in 3 weeks, garnered more than 1 million visits to the application page, more than 3.5 million photo views, and over half a million votes

Samsung’s Like it, Reveal it, Win in promotion via Facebook involved weekly giveways that incentivized users to regularly participate and invite friends to join. After they liked Samsung TV’s Facebook page, users entered to win the current giveaway by unlocking pixels which can be done by recommending the contest to friends. The more pixels unlocked, the better chances the user has to uncover and win the prize. This campaign is different than most in that in constantly engages users with the brand and with the contest. Instead of entering once and never returning to the page, users are engaged on a weekly basis and gives them a reason to invite their friends to the contest too. This garners more than 12,000 Facebook friends (which was its main KPI) within the first week and a half and continued to grow throughout the campaign.

Domino’s UK “Tweet for Cheap Pizza” campaign via Twitter involved followers tweeting at Domino’s using the hashtag #letsdolunch. With every tweet, Domino’s reduced the price of their pizza by o.o1 pound. The starting price was 15.99 pounds and by the end of the lunch campaign, the price of pizza was 7.74 pounds. This garnered the attention of 85,000 tweets.

With the super unique and buzz-worthy billboard that the creative team has come up with for the GE campaign, it got me interested so I started looking at other out of the box, above and beyond boards that have created quite a bit of buzz. Here are some cool ones that I found.

A series of billboards that double as advertisements and two bedroom apartments for the homeless! Because of the pre-existing space in between the boards (that each face a different direction of oncoming traffic) and wiring for electricity, why not make use of the space, right?

This bus shelter that lets everyone uncover something as if they were an archaeologist. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago employed this scratch-off buss shelter to promote its new exhibit The Way of the Shovel

This disaster movie billboard is one that you definitely can’t miss. The idea was to mimic the idea of Manhattan being underwater, complete with a replica of the Empire State Building further out in the water

I think it’s safe to say that there are two things on the top of our minds right now: advertising (duh, it’s what we do) and the World Cup (flashback to Thursday’s lunch break). So, I’m going to share some stuff about advertising during the World Cup! Yay FIFA (which my mom the other day pronounced “fie-fuh”…parents).

Social media is expected to rake in even more revenue than the traditional media sectors. Adidas is launching its biggest campaign yet in order to support itself as a World Cut Sponsor, and has decided to put more dollars toward digital and social marketing than traditional. “It’s not about a need to do ‘the big TV ad’,” says Tom Ramsden, global brand marketing director for Adidas football. “This will undoubtedly be the most social World Cup ever and probably the most social event in history.”

A fun fact: there have been more tweets about the World Cup before that ball had even been kicked than there was throughout the entire tournament in 2010.

Another fun fact: three matches have already had a higher number of tweets-per-second than the London Olympic Games.

This tournament is an interesting advertising opportunity: since the game consists of two 45 minute continuous halves, the only opportunity for broadcast comes at halftime, driving advertisers to social and digital spaces. These short broadcast spaces are super duper inflated and global sponsorship packages sold out years in advance. With each of the eight sponsors paying $75 million, that’s equal to almost twenty 30 second Super Bowl spots. Each sponsor gets a minimum of 1,120 video insertions including 451 30-second TV commercials, hundreds of mentions with visuals when announcers are talking about the games, and 359 5-second commercials.

Here are seven brands that nailed their World Cup ads (if you haven’t seem them already):

First I’d like to say that I promise I’m not a terrible person for doubting the “whole-hearted goodness” of cause marketing – you’ll see.

Renee gave me a project where I had to research how much profit companies make by engaging in charitable partnerships. What I found in addition to the profitability it brings to companies was the ugly underbelly of these “charitable” partnerships. While there are a lot of partnerships out there that truly donate a significant amount of profit to their cause and do so truthfully, I’ve come to find that not all companies partnering with charities are genuine do-gooders.

The goal of cause marketing is to lure consumers into making purchases that make them feel good about themselves and the products they’re buying that promote a cause. These promotions are much more about increasing profits than generating significant funds for charities. Certainly, cause-related shopping promotions can be an effective way to increase short-term sales, and more sales equal more donation dollars. However, charities would get more donation money if you just went to the charity’s website and made even a minimal $2 contribution. Retailers and manufacturers know at the outset of the program that they won’t have to “donate” in the large majority of cases. They exploit this knowledge for their own gain.

Some companies aren’t disclosing exactly how much they’re donating, how the donations occur, or what the cause is, a lot of times because the donation amount is so minimal or there isn’t a charity at all. They’re also unintentionally dissuading people from donating to charities directly, which would have a greater impact on the charity. Multiple studies have shown that consumers consistently overestimate how much of the amount they spend on a product goes to charity. Since companies aren’t required to be transparent about how much they donate and how much they profit, it’s hard to tell where all the money goes. Ethos Water declared in 2010 that they would donate $10 million to safe water projects. Two years after this goal was establishes, one Ethos spokesperson merely states that they have raised over $6 million, which is the same amount they had raised by 2008. Another says they raised $7.2 million. Another said $6 million. Another said they had in fact raised $10 million but donated only $7.2 million of it. Pact, a hip San Francisco underwear company, states “For every pair of Pact you buy, we pay it forward by making a positive impact on our world.” When asked exactly how much goes to these undisclosed charities, co-founder Jeff Denby merely states that the donation is “significant.” Whats scary, is just because a company states that they are giving to a charity doesn’t mean they do so. It’s always a good idea to check the charity’s web site and make sure the company is a partner and be careful not to buy products that state or imply that a charity will benefit from a consumer sale or transaction rather than clearly disclose how the charity benefits from the sale of products or services.

The disconnect nowadays between companies and their causes are continually growing. Take KFC’s partnership with Susan G. Komen for example. The “Colonel of obesity” paired with cancer research is not a viable match and in turn taints the image of both parties. Or Yoplait’s “Save Lids to Save Lives” campaign where $.10 from each lid donated to goes to Susan G. Komen. Sounds like a good idea, right? What if you knew that you had to mail in the lids back to Yoplait in order for them to make the donation? Or if you knew that Yoplait yogurt was made from milk from cows that are treated with rBGH, a growth hormone that has been proven to cause breast cancer in women? In regards to the Yoplait partnership, Consumer Digest states, “Companies bank on consumer laziness, and they’re all too happy to present an image of doing it for you—and make a nice profit in the process—by generating a cause-related marketing campaign.”

Campbell Soup runs a high-profile campaign with pink ribbons on the labels of two popular soups—tomato and chicken noodle—as well as two other products the company owns—V8 vegetable juice and Swanson chicken broth. Contrary to what several other publications have indicated, purchasing one of these products doesn’t trigger a donation. Instead, Campbell applies the label to those products during October as a way to promote National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and realizes a potential $7.5 million increase in sales through the pink-ribbon campaign.

I have one more example and then I’m done ranting –

Frito-Lay had a partnership with Destination Joy, a Make a Wish program. It required customers to buy a specially marked bag then enter the 10 digit UPC code on the company’s website. Once this is entered, $.25 is donated. But, they committed to a minimum donation of $300,000 and a cap of $345,000. In other words, if more than 1.38 million people go out of their way to do this it will be for naught.

These past two weeks of the broternship have taught me exactly how much rush hour sucks. But, luckily this internship rocks and looking forward to my day keeps me sane on my way in from Hudson. In the mere two weeks I’ve been here I have learned more about the advertising industry than I thought possible. The broternship has also taught me that advertising really is its own little world with its own language. I’m coming to realize that everything talked about is an acronym for something. My lovely supervisor, Kate, was even kind enough to put together a list of terms and abbreviations that would help me. Here are some of the things I learned about so far: